The Knife Deserved
by Hekate1308
Summary: The first month he spends screaming for Sam, even if it's clear his brother won't come to save him because he can't. Dean in Hell.


**Author's note: I wanted to write Dean in Hell, so I did.**

**I don't own anything, please review. **

The first month he spends screaming for Sam, even if it's clear his brother won't come to save him because he can't. If Dean could think of anything else beside the pain tearing through him every second, he wouldn't want him to.

But all he feels is pain and blood running down his arms and legs – he is dead now, this only his soul, why does he bleed? – and fear and hatred toward Alastair, the demon doing this to him, so he screams, begs, pleads, for this to stop, for Sam to come.

He doesn't know how he knows what day it is, how he can measure time. There's no day or night; it's just Hell, the same fire, the same pain, over and over again, and he doesn't pass out like he hoped in the first days he would. He's always conscious, every single minute.

And every evening, Alastair asks the same question; it's the only one of his sentences Dean comprehends, because normally he is too deafened by his screams and the pain to hear the demon.

Alastair asks him if he wants to take the knife in his hand, hurt others. Dean doesn't answer, he simply continues to scream.

The demon repeats the question again and again, but Dean doesn't listen. Doesn't want to listen.

So he screams, because it's the only thing he can do, and it drowns out Alastair's taunts. He screams and screams, and then, after the first month, he just – stops. Because he is tired; because he has given up; he doesn't know. But he stops screaming.

And for forty-four days, he doesn't say anything at all. He just writhes on the rack, and Alastair smiles and slices into him and causes him pain, hot blinding pain, and every time Dean thinks _That's it, it can't get any worse_, it does, and then Alastair steps back and his body – soul – whatever – repairs himself and it's the same all over again.

Not the same. Because the demon always finds new ways to hurt him. That's no surprise, all things considered. He must have been here so long, he probably knows enough methods to torture Dean for all eternity without using the same one twice.

Eternity. Dean never imagined how long it could be, but here, with every second feeling like a never-ending mixture of his blood trickling through the demon's fingers, his flesh being torn apart and the screams of the other trapped souls, he feels what it will be.

Until he is turned into a demon, that is.

Maybe it's the memory of what Ruby told him that gets him to start screaming again in his third month, on his seventy-fourth day. Alastair simply reacts with a smirk, which is worse than anything he could have said, because it tells Dean how weak he is.

He is a pathetic human being who couldn't make it through the first minute without starting to scream, then stopped screaming because he was too tired to protest anymore, and thinks now that doing it again will prevent him being turned into a demon.

He's weak. He's scared. He's worthless.

Even if Sammy could find a way, Dean doesn't deserve to be saved.

Once he's come so far, once this realization strikes him and hurts him more than any knife, than any of the instruments Alastair has could, the demon switches tactics.

Suddenly, it's not about physical pain anymore.

When Alastair withdraws, all Dean feels is relief. For a moment, the first moment in ninety-two days, he isn't being tortured, and the simple absence of pain is everything he can hope for here, and it feels so good –

Of course, that is when he hears Alastair chuckle and the hallucinations start.

It's almost always Sam, but sometimes it's his father or Bobby, and on a few occasions, even his mother. Other than that, they are pretty much the same, but always just different enough to hurt as much as the first time.

_You're disgusting. What did I say about keeping Sammy safe? Can't do that, now, can you? _

_I called _you_ my angel? You're nothing but filth. You'll become one of them._

_You Idjit, ever stop to think about others? No, it's always "me, me, me, I can't live without him, so I'll sell my soul" – and now it's all crying princess. Pathetic, that's what you are._

_You are just a co-dependent dick. Why did you think I ran away? Because of Dad? No, it was you. It was always you. Never could be myself around you, you had to know everything, run after me – you ruined my life for eighteen years. And then, just when I am happy, you drag me back in, and I lose everything. _Everything_. Did you really think I was trying to get you out of the deal? I was glad I'd get rid of you. _

That they're not real doesn't make it better, and Dean cries. He would feel humiliation, if Alastair didn't decide that he might as well start slicing into his flesh again in addition to the hallucinations, and he is too busy paying attention to the way his tears mingle with the blood and how they together burn in his wounds.

It's his hundredth day in Hell.

It goes on. Sometimes it's simply torture, sometimes it's just hallucinations, sometimes it's both, and Dean can never predict what will come next. Alastair enjoys surprising him too much. All he knows is that, no matter what he is being subjected to, he wishes for the other forms of torture, but once he gets it, he wishes he hadn't wished for that, and the cycle repeats itself.

When he thought about it, when being in Hell was still only a nightmare and not a reality and he was driving around on Earth with his brother were there were days and nights and hope, he wondered if he would get used to the torture eventually, if it would hurt less.

The answer is No. It always hurts just as much as the first time, if not more.

The only difference is that slowly Dean learns to hear Alastair's voice over his own screams, and he doesn't want to. As if the pain wasn't bad enough.

His soul is laid out in front of a demon, and not just for him to play with, but he can read it too. All his insecurities, his issues. And if there's someone who has a lot of those, it's him. 

"Not quite the man your daddy wanted you to be, are we?"

"You'll enjoy this. It hurts much more than the other knife".

"You know you could end this – I have a feeling you'd be a good apprentice".

It's taunts like the last Dean fears most. Because a question a day he could handle. A question a day meant that he simply had to be strong for one second.

But hearing the offers all the time, the words constantly dripping from Alastair's lips –

Dean knows he'll give in because he's not strong, he's weak and scared of more pain. It's only a question of when.

And Alastair knows it too.

His third year in Hell has just begun.

He keeps counting the days and months and years for no other reason than he can, it's one of the few things he can do, and he'll do it until the end of time, because that's how long he's going to be here. Or not. He can't forget that he will turn into a demon, and then he'll claw his way out and possess some poor bastard and kill others until a hunter ganks him.

Might even be Sam or Bobby. If they're still alive. He has no idea how long it takes for someone to turn into a demon.

All he feels is pain, pain he's sure is human, but maybe that's just another of Alastair's tricks and he's already halfway there. Perhaps he'll be sent back any day, perhaps to kill his brother.

That thought hurts him as much as any torture Alastair could invent, and the demon knows.

Dean can't believe it when he passes the ten year and the twenty year mark and not only hasn't been turned (at the very least doesn't know it and is not on Earth, targeting humans) but hasn't given in yet. It gets harder and harder to say no. Knowing that with a simple "yes" the pain would stop.

But he would be inflicting it on others, and he clings to whatever small piece of humanity there must be in him, somewhere under the pain and the blood and the worthlessness.

Every time he says no, he hears Alastair cackling. The demon is waiting, and Dean can only stall him for so long.

And he knows. Alastair knows. He wouldn't be surprised if every demon in Hell knew. How many demons are here that he has sent back? How many demons whose "friends" or "family" or "lovers" he has killed?

He breaks in his thirty-first year.

Predictably enough, it's not the physical pain that breaks him. It's another hallucination about Sammy. It's not even the worst. Everyone is just as bad as the others.

He can't take it anymore because he's weak. That's the whole truth.

When Sammy tells him that he isn't his brother, that he never truly was, because who would want someone so disgustingly pathetic, he screams "Yes!" without any conscious decision.

He could take it back, but he doesn't, because he wants it to end.

"Yes! Yes, I'll do it! Just – "

He stops just before he starts pleading Alastair make Sam go away, but the demon grins and does it anyway.

Alastair doesn't say anything, he simply puts a knife in Dean's hands and pushes him to a rack that a soul that is definitely new to Hell is fettered to.

Dean knows what he has to do, and he does. He tries not to feel pleasure as he slices and cuts and causes pain, but he has been in pain so long that taking it out on someone else feels so good –

He is worthless. Utterly worthless. Alastair doesn't even need to explain much to him, he just shows him the instruments and Dean knows what to do.

He was always destined for Hell, it seems.

He thinks not about it, tries not to think about it, concentrates on the knife as it slides through muscle and bone and soul, and the screams of his victims.

That's what they are. Victims. He is to them what Alastair was to him. He's no better.

Sometimes he tells himself that at least he's not torturing them with hallucinations. He knows it's nothing but a meagre attempt to make himself feel better.

He wonders if he's already looking like a demon to the souls who are tied to his rack.

He wonders if some of the souls weren't killers, but simply stupid and made a deal with a crossroads demon.

For him, it didn't make any difference. He would have ended up in Hell anyway. It's where he belongs. The way he feels when he cuts and slices and hurts proves it.

Alastair starts complementing him, and he doesn't know if it's better or worse than the demon's silence at the beginning of his apprenticeship.

"That's it, now a little more to the left – I know you'd be good at this. You'll be as good as me in no time".

Ever since he arrived and the pain started, Dean has imagined what it would be like torturing Alastair, and now he pretends it's the demon on the rack, not some soul who pleads and screams for him to stop.

Although he has given in, he still counts. He notes the anniversary of the day he first tortured a soul.

It goes on.

Then he's been in Hell for thirty-five years and keeps wondering how old Sammy is by now.

It goes on.

In his fortieth year, torturing souls has become a routine, and he is certain he'll be a demon soon, if he's not one already.

He can't bring himself to care, because he never deserved to be human in the first place.

Far away, so far away that he can't hear it, there are the screams of demons and the breaking of doors by a bright light.

**Author's note: I hope you liked it, please review. **


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